Mini Sidebar

TAG: Twitter

A colleague of mine recently raised this question with me. With all of the information on social media, how does one possibly figure out what is true and what is false? In the middle of an emergency or ‘breaking news’ especially, how do people follow Twitter…a forum where anyone in the world can post whatever they want, any time they want.

Unfortunately, from both a communications perspective and a social media perspective, I laughed. That’s a rhetorical question, no? Isn’t the answer obvious….do you really believe everything you read, see, hear?

But then I realized he was quite serious and, in fairness, he probably represents a good majority of the people we’re trying to reach: people who aren’t necessarily experts in social media but recognize it as a source for information.

When I took a moment to recognize the sincerity of his query, I realized he was right. How do we know? Truth be told, I told him, we don’t.

That’s why as law enforcement agencies, it’s our responsibility to fill that space with accurate, reliable and timely information. During an emergency or ‘breaking news’, your coordinated communications efforts should automatically include the use of social media.

Consider creating a hashtag, inviting your partners, sending the message to the community that they can follow you for accurate, reliable and timely information.

Most importantly, you better match actions to words. Post regular messages – even if it is just to say “we have no new information at this time”. Respond, if it’s appropriate, to erroneous information. Reply to questions. Challenge myths and rumours.

If we want people to use social media to engage with us, then we better be the ones to fill the space with information they can rely on. What’s the point of encouraging the community, or your own members for that matter, to use social media if it’s not being used in an effective way? Yes, it should be the public’s responsibility to seek out accurate and reliable information. But it should be our responsibility to provide it in the first place.

Meaghan Gray

Meaghan played a leading role on the Service’s Social Media Working Group. With her colleagues, the Toronto Police Service developed a corporate social media strategy which will expand the way the Service uses these platforms to support communications and community engagement. The strategy involved almost every area of the Service and resulted in policy, guidelines, and training in the use of social media.

Meaghan received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies from Queen’s University and her Corporate Communications Certificate from George Brown College.

She can be reached at meaghan.gray@torontopolice.on.ca or @mrsmeaghangray on Twitter.

Several police agencies have held tweet-a-thons or tweet-the-beat events to create awareness of police work call attention to issues. A few of us have been talking a while about holding an event where police agencies everywhere could have whatever model of tweet-a-thon they want but on the same day and time in an effort to increase visiblity even more. That date for the Global Police Tweet-a-thon has been set for March 22nd of 2013 beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing for 24 hours.

Any police agency can join and tweet any portion of the 24 hour period.

Early entries are from all over Texas and the rest of the U.S. with a few committed from Canada and the UK. Our hope is to get agencies from as many countries involved as possible.

The Mesa County Sheriff in Colorado is one of the agency’s to throw its sheriff’s hat in early. PIO Heather Benjamin explained it this way, “The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office hopes to share a small piece of Western Colorado with the world and highlight the positive aspects of law enforcement. In addition, we look forward to partnering with law enforcement globally through social media. Exciting times!”

And in Louisiana, the Chief of Police in Thibodaux said he’s promoting transparency in policing actions and furthering proactive social media integration. Chief Scott Silveri said his agency will participate in the tweet-a-thon because, “Our participation in the global tweet-a-thon is based on the hope that other agencies break from the reactive isolationist nature of traditional law enforcement, and begin realizing the benefits of sharing timely and relevant information through social media.”

To participate, just email Lauri Stevens at lauri@lawscomm.net with your agency name, contact name and email address. Then mark your calendar for March 22nd. We’ll be in touch with the hashtag to be used for the event.

Tweeting as an organization can be an interesting exercise, but it doesn’t have to be like cuffing a naked and bloody mental patient (if you’ve ever had the opportunity, you know what I mean). As a Law Enforcement organization, we are not tweeting about the great cheesesteak we had last night, the shellacking the Sixers just put on the Knicks (sorry NYPD), or the smelly person that just sat next to us on the subway.

Content, especially for tweets, is all around us. Tweeting is a great way to let people know what you are doing on other digital media. “VIDEO: Suspect wanted for Robbery in the 3rd District” and a link to the video is all it takes. Traffic updates are another easy thing that people love to see. We are often the ones closing the streets for auto accident, fire scenes, parades, etc. A quick tweet, “TRAFFIC ADVISORY: Today until 9pm, 18th to 20th St from Race to Callowhill including Logan Cir closed for Franklin Science Fair” lets people know they need to plan a different route and that we are looking out for them.

Tweets can also give your citizens a peek “behind the badge.” Is one of your coworkers retiring? Getting an award? Snap a picture with your phone and tweet it. Are your officers doing some high-speed training? While we do not have provocatively dressed crime scene investigators using green lasers to find a single hair in a warehouse to blow the case wide open (if you do, call me when you are hiring!), one of the most popular things we have ever tweeted, was an impromptu picture of officers doing Patrol Bicycle training. Sweaty cops after a bike ride, who knew?

Another important aspect of Twitter is showing off. That’s right, puff out your chest a little, you’re doing a good job! Citizens tweet some nice things at us and we love to retweet them. People enjoy seeing that their police department is paying attention and it lets our citizens know about some of the good things our officers are doing. In that vein, we also try to respond to every question. It is usually just a phone number or a link but people really do appreciate it.

We all have many other duties to perform and tweeting could be a full-time job, but making an effort to reach out to the people that we are paid to serve, even if it is digitally, is a cornerstone of good policing. So get over the fact that is has a silly name, get your department a Twitter handle, and tweet away!

Corporal Frank Domizio

Corporal Frank Domizio has been with the Philadelphia Police Department for 16 years. He is currently assigned to the Department’s Office of Media Relations and Public Affairs where he is the Social Media Community Manager. Frank is also a regular lecturer at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business on the topics of social media and content strategy.

The Guelph Police Service launched its Twitter Social Media engagement platform on November 5th, 2009. Since that time, the service has amassed over 5000 followers through its two main Twitter accounts, @gpsmedia (3156) and @Chief_BLarkin (2281).

The #GPS uses Twitter as a means to:

• Engage community groups and businesses
• Promote the great “face time” work our police officers do on a daily basis
• Solicit service delivery feedback from the community and businesses
• Provide emergency messaging during serious incidents and municipal emergencies
• Create and maintain positive police-youth interactions
• Cross promote and market community partner events

In July 2011, Sergeant Doug Pflug, program creator and GPS’s Media Relations Officer, researched ways to increase followers of his Twitter account when he came across a new article discussing a “Tweet-a-Thon” conducted in Vancouver, B.C., in 2010. Vancouver Police’s Social Media Officer, Constable Anne Longley, recently explained that, “social media has been a very successful way for us to interact with the community that we weren’t able to before. It is interactive. It is not just a way for us to push out a message” (Nguyen, 2012). The Guelph Police Service has since held three Twitter campaigns, offering on-line followers a glimpse of what occurs during a police officer’s typical 10-hour shift.

Tweet-a-Thon – Throughout the past year, the #GPS hosted three Tweet-a-Thons during high call-volume time frames, specifically the annual 2011 Project Safe Semester kick-off and 2011 Project Safe Semester wrap-up and the 2012 St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. During these three ten-hour Tweet-a-Thons, Media Relations Officer Pflug tweeted general information about each call for service dispatched to his fellow officers. Most of the complaints concerned public intoxication, noise ordinances, disturbances, and trespassing. “We wanted to give the public real insight into the types of calls we respond to,” explains Sgt. Pflug. “We wanted followers to appreciate how engaged we are while balancing the public’s rights to privacy and other pertinent legislative requirements.” During the Project Safe Semester #PSS2011 campaign, Sgt. Pflug tweeted 164 times and responded to 44 direct messages for the kick-off and he tweeted 108 times and replied to 43 direct messages for the wrap-up.

When the Tweet-a-Thon began, Sergeant Pflug provided followers a basic outline of the geographical locations and boundaries within the City of Guelph:

“@gpsmedia #pss2011 call location info: N-4 =downtown, N-3 =entire city south of Wellington, N-1 =west side N-2 is east side both split at Woolwich St”

The tweeted locations remained vague. “We didn’t want people following us around or showing up to potentially dangerous situations, so the information in the tweets will be restricted to neighbourhoods rather than exact locations.” said Sgt. Pflug.

The Tweet-a-Thon Pflug’s frequent tweets highlighted the variety of calls dispatched to officers, hourly cell and prisoner checks, arrests, offences committed, tickets issued for public intoxication, urination, and other offences. At the end of the evening, Sergeant Pflug tweeted:

Following the Tweet-a-Thon, Sgt. Pflug reviewed the results, including several messages from followers and tweet statistics. The Tweet-a-Thon was deemed to be a success. “This new approach provided a great opportunity to engage the social media community and incited several positive and supportive comments.” Below are just a few examples of the positive responses from members of the community:

@SociableGuelph: Fantastic work @GPSmedia @Deputy_BLarkin for tweet-a-thon #pss2011. Amazing work you do for #Guelph – fascinating to follow just one night

@joey_lotion: tweetathon rly showed the high demand on GPS. Thx for making it happen! Hopefully repeated in the future. @gpsmedia @Deputy_BLarkin #pss2011

@karenjconnelly: @gpsmedia Thanks for keeping Guelph safe while the rest of us sleeps! Never forget that you’re our everyday heroes. #pss2011

Sgt. Pflug conducted a supplemental search to determine the potential re-tweet impact from other Twitter members following this real-time event. A “re-tweet” is the re-posting of someone else’s tweet, distinguished by a specific re-tweet icon. Pflug tweeted a serious disturbance call and within a short time, the message was re-tweeted to 21,795 Twitter accounts.

“It’s astonishing that one 140-character message can appear on over 21,795 hand-held devices, tablets, laptops, etc. in just a few moments,” commented Sgt. Pflug. “We credit Twitter messaging and re-tweets for assisting us in locating a missing elderly male in December 2010. His vehicle plate number was tweeted, picked-up by media and broadcasted. A short time later, a radio listener saw his vehicle beside a rural corn field. Police were called and the elderly male was located in a disoriented state. We believe that had he not been found so quickly, he may have easily succumbed to the weather and perished.”

Since this time, the police services in Sarnia and Chatham-Kent have conducted similar law enforcement Tweet-a-Thons, mirroring the successes achieved by their predecessors. Approximately 30 percent of police forces currently have Twitter accounts. “It is yet another tool used to reach out to the community, display transparency, and at the same time, help us do our job.” Said Sgt. Pflug.

Although still in its early stages throughout North America, the concept of social media in law enforcement has proven to be a very good community engagement tool. The Guelph Police Service further utilized Twitter as an information-sharing tool last summer after a large gas leak in a residential neighbourhood, resulting in a near citywide power outage. “Once we confirmed the power was out, we immediately began tweeting messages to followers advising them of the outage and asking they to provide their location and whether or not they were experiencing any interruptions. When your power goes out, so does your phone, TV, computer and radio.

Once the power was restored, many followers expressed their gratitude as everyone seems to have a hand-held device and our tweets kept them up to date in a time of crisis. As a result, we are currently investigating the formal application of Twitter during municipal emergencies as part of the City of Guelph’s Emergency Management Strategy.” said Sgt. Pflug.

Little academic literature exists to effectively measure the impact of social media on policing. However, the emerging benefits has led most police personnel to believe this is not a fad but rather a fixture for police services to efficiently engage the community in times of crisis and buttress positive police-community interactions.

Sergeant Doug Pflug

-Sgt. Douglas Pflug has been the Media Relations Officer for the Guelph Police Service since June 2008. He is the Vice-Chair of the Ontario Media Resource Officers Network. He has lectured in Canada and the United States on the benefits a comprehensive social media platform can provide your police service. If you wish further information or assistance with your “Tweet-a-Thon”, please contact (519) 831-9285, @gpsmedia, douglas.pflug@police.guelp.on.ca or www.facebook.com/gpsmedia.

It’s prime real estate to show off your department

Not to be confused with your background image or Twitter avatar, now you can add a header photo to your Twitter profile. Think of it as similar to the Facebook cover photo that came out with the Timeline. In both cases, it’s prime real estate to show off your department. Check out Rapid City PD on Twitter.

Just go into your settings and click design, and then scroll down and you’ll see the option to add a header image. Upload the image and click save changes.

One downside is that you have to get the dimensions right. Use a 72 dpi (dots per inch) image that’s at least 1252 x 626. Twitter allows you to enlarge the image and some rudimentary centering ability. The other downside is your Twitter stats and bio are centered on the photo in white. Keep that in mind when choosing a photo so the info doesn’t get lost in the background.

If you want to do something more creative with your Twitter header, here are some ideas from Mashable.

About ConnectedCOPS

The vision behind ConnectedCOPS is to enhance law officers’ ability to succeed with social media tools by providing insight, encouragement, education and the overall support required. It is also to promote the insightful thoughts of the law enforcement social media visionaries by providing them a voice on this blog.